I have the first CR-48 Chromebook that Google sent out a few years ago. The first iterations of Chrome OS were a disaster. It was basically a full-screen version of Chrome browser behind a login window. Ugh.
However, for kicks and grins I pulled out the CR-48 a little while ago and was pleasantly surprised that I was able to update to the latest version and - gasp - it was actually quite usable!
I have been using it on and off ever since (it sits in our conference room as a general note-taking and projector device) and I must say - there's absolutely something to this thing. The battery life is great (like 9 hours), screen is OK, keyboard is nice. Trackpad is still miserable.
For the most part my non-professional-work-life lives in a Chrome window anyway (gmail, google docs). If it had a decent text editor (I guess there's a SSH app you can get) I could see it working pretty well as a web development machine.
But for the proverbial "Aunt Tillie", this would be not a terrible device if the iPad was a little too simple. Auto-updates, Chrome syncing, Google docs? Pretty compelling.
I recently installed lubuntu on mine and was pleasantly surprised with the performance, although its probably not what Google had in mind. At least I'm still running chromium.
It was the opposite for me. I've been using it for some time and stopped due to the constant crashing.
Each new update I had hoped the stability would improve, but it seems they're for new features only the new models could flawlessly run. Alas, I gave up a month ago. It's sitting in my pile of netbooks.
I have a CR-48 and I don't recall ever seeing it crash. Are you referring to a kernel panic or something that crashes the whole machine or just a browser tab crashing?
My CR-48 is my 7 year old daughter's machine to play flash games and such. Unfortunately, the CPU/GPU is a but underpowered for full screen Adobe Flash content.
However, for kicks and grins I pulled out the CR-48 a little while ago and was pleasantly surprised that I was able to update to the latest version and - gasp - it was actually quite usable!
I have been using it on and off ever since (it sits in our conference room as a general note-taking and projector device) and I must say - there's absolutely something to this thing. The battery life is great (like 9 hours), screen is OK, keyboard is nice. Trackpad is still miserable.
For the most part my non-professional-work-life lives in a Chrome window anyway (gmail, google docs). If it had a decent text editor (I guess there's a SSH app you can get) I could see it working pretty well as a web development machine.
But for the proverbial "Aunt Tillie", this would be not a terrible device if the iPad was a little too simple. Auto-updates, Chrome syncing, Google docs? Pretty compelling.